Here’s a great song written by my musical partner Mary Kelley, with a beautiful arrangement by our friend Dave Lebolt. I produced and played the guitars on this one. Mary has a short back story about writing this song that I thought I would pass on:
I am skeptical yet always delighted at the little melodic treasures hidden in alternate tunings and inverted chords. I had spent an illuminating week with the Guitarcraft people in Grossetto, Italy. Fripp required that we all use his violin-like tuning. The sympathetic response of the adjacent strings on my twelve-string made a delicious wash of harmony over my partial chords. That’s the where what and how of Here I Am’s music.
On that same trip, I went to… Strike that. No one “goes to” Venice. One “sees” Venice. I saw Venice and was amazed. I wanted to roll in it like a dog on an equestrian trail, my Venetian slippers wiggling in the air. Fortunately, I did not do so. The melody from Grossetto was constantly playing in my mind while we wandered the streets of Venice at Carnevale. When I walked into the Grand Council Chamber of the Doge’s Palace, the first line came to me as I looked up at the gold and the red and the grandeur. (Cf. Daly City Dept. of Motor Vehicles.)
Here I am.
